The Way of the Sevenfold Secret

Lilias Trotter moved from England to Algiers in 1888, at the age of 35, and died there in 1928. In the latter stages of her mission there, she wrote specifically for Muslims influenced by mysticism. Lilias based The Way of the Sevenfold Secret on Christ’s seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s gospel, and attempted to link them to the traditional seven steps taken by members of Sufi orders in their quest for union with God. This republication should enable readers to capture the essence of a woman whose legacy is vitally alive for our times.

Lilias Trotter moved from England to Algiers in 1888, at the age of 35, and died there in 1928. During this forty year period she developed and led The Algiers Mission Band that attempted to gather men and women for Christian worship from the Arabic speaking Muslim population.

In 1913 she became aware of the need to write specifically for those who were influenced by mysticism, and felt a strong call to bring to them what was for her “the true mysticism of the life hid in Christ in God”. By 1920, Lilias conceived of a booklet based on the seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s gospel, since she found them especially effective in meeting spiritual needs. These sayings of Christ are presented in the order in which they come in John’s gospel, and Lilias attempts to link them to the traditional seven steps taken by members of Sufi orders in their quest for union with God.

Lilias Trotter embodied in her own life the appeal that she made in this piece of writing. Her devotion to Christ, her ability to listen to Muslims whom she served, and her eirenic tone in sharing her faith, model for Christians in the twenty first century appropriate ways to relate to Muslims. The re-publication of The Way of the Sevenfold Secret in the original Arabic along with Lilias’ English translation should enable readers to capture the essence of a woman whose legacy is vitally alive for our times.

Lilias Trotter moved from England to Algiers in 1888, at the age of 35, and died there in 1928. During this forty year period she developed and led The Algiers Mission Band that attempted to gather men and women for Christian worship from the Arabic speaking Muslim population.

In 1913 she became aware of the need to write specifically for those who were influenced by mysticism, and felt a strong call to bring to them what was for her “the true mysticism of the life hid in Christ in God”. By 1920, Lilias conceived of a booklet based on the seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s gospel, since she found them especially effective in meeting spiritual needs. These sayings of Christ are presented in the order in which they come in John’s gospel, and Lilias attempts to link them to the traditional seven steps taken by members of Sufi orders in their quest for union with God.

Lilias Trotter embodied in her own life the appeal that she made in this piece of writing. Her devotion to Christ, her ability to listen to Muslims whom she served, and her eirenic tone in sharing her faith, model for Christians in the twenty first century appropriate ways to relate to Muslims. The re-publication of The Way of the Sevenfold Secret in the original Arabic along with Lilias’ English translation should enable readers to capture the essence of a woman whose legacy is vitally alive for our times.

With Especial Reference to His Religious Experiences and Opinions

In this article, the author attempts to put together a biography of al-Ghazzali, the Muslim theologian, based on numerous sources. The aspects of his work as a lawyer and his influence on the Church of Islam are discussed at length.

The Significance of Body and Community

The prayer of the heart is an early Christian contemplative tradition of striking profundity and beauty. Christian authors of the Greek- as well as the Syriac-speaking world placed the heart at the center of a mystical theology that viewed the body as a God-given instrument of divine ascent and the relational setting of Christian existence as an important means of experiencing God’s abiding inner presence. This work sheds light on the Syrian church’s approach to the mystery of the divine encounter.

John of Damascus as a contextual example of identity formation in Early Islam

A study of the identity-formation process that the Christians of Syria-Palestine experienced during the Umayyad Caliphate. It approaches this subject by using John of Damascus and his writings on Islam as a case-study. This provides an exhaustive study of the available historical data in order to stimulate some further thought on John of Damascus’s theology and legacy from a contextual and intercultural methodology. Such an examination has not yet been pursued in the scholarship of Byzantine Christianity during that era. Proceeding from a centralizing ‘context’, the monograph revisits John of Damascus’s legacy (and the Umayyad Christians’ identity-formation of that era) from the perspective of his historical, Islamic-Arabic context, and not from any assumed, metanarrative, common to contemporary pro-Byzantine theology scholars.

$80.46

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